Issue 115

Nov / Dec 2010

news

All the latest archaeology news from around the country

features

On the Trail of Viking Women

Jane Kershaw reports on an astounding quantity of Viking-style jewellery found in England

THE BIG DIG: Bestwall Quarry

At this large site in Dorset local, largely unfunded amateurs were nominated to manage the archaeology with fascinating results

Life Between the Nations

The wartime correspondence of German refugee archaeologist Paul Jacobsthal

Excavating the Living Dead

Alistair Barclay examines the stories of the many people who were buried on Boscombe Down, Wiltshire

The Human Remains Crisis

Change is promised, but fieldwork continues under conditions that many are unhappy with

The Little House by the Shore

The directors of the Star Carr excavation update readers on the endangered organic remains

The Varmints Show

In the Varmints' third exploration, we introduce Great Excavations – The Musical

on the web

Neolithic excavations online and the Cranbourne Chase gets an overhaul

CBA Correspondent

From CBA Director, Mike Heyworth on academia

letters

Your views and responses

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

feature

Excavating the living dead

The Amesbury archer has been well-publicised. But, says Alistair Barclay, many other people were buried on Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, whose remarkable stories – perhaps as in life – the archer has overshadowed.

Not so long ago, it was thought that the great bronze age barrow cemeteries, Stonehenge and the other ritual monuments on Salisbury Plain were contemporary. In the past 20 years radiocarbon dating and excavations have shown that the barrows are mostly not so old, and that the preceding henges, avenues and stone circles themselves have a rich and complex history. Yet there has been surprisingly little new research into the burials, which are still best known from excavations conducted two centuries ago.

Major developments around Amesbury – including over 2,500 planned houses and a 65ha (160 acres) business park – have recently offered an unparalleled opportunity for commercial excavation in a landscape apparently free of any major monuments, immediately east of the river Avon and less than 5km (3 miles) from Stonehenge. Excavation on Boscombe Down, by Wessex Archaeology for Bloor Homes, Persimmon Homes and QinetiQ, has been particularly enlightening.

It is impossible to ignore the down's special location, with views across to King Barrow Ridge, overlooking Stonehenge, and the great henge enclosure of Durrington Walls. North and east of the housing development are the linear barrow cemeteries of New Barn Down, Earl's Down Farm and Boscombe Down West. To the northwest, within the town of Amesbury, were the Ratfyn Seven Barrows that William Stukeley sketched in the 18th century.

Recently the hill became known for the discovery of three quite different and remarkable Beaker graves: the so called "Amesbury Archer", his "Companion" and the "Boscombe Bowmen" (radiocarbon dated to 2400–2200BC). These are amongst the earliest copper age burials to be found in Britain: the archer is the richest, while that of the bowmen contained more individuals than any other known Beaker grave. Between them these burial pits contained well over 100 objects, including no less than 13 Beaker pots and items of gold and copper.

That the archer came from an area of much colder climate than Wessex, where he was buried, and hence perhaps from central Europe; that the "companion", born locally, travelled to central Europe in childhood and back; and that three of the bowmen came from an area of older (pre-Mesozoic rocks) typical of parts of Wales, northwest England or Scotland, though some areas of the continent cannot be ruled out: merely emphasised the exceptional nature of these burials and their wider connections (see feature, Sep 2004).

Crouched Infant Burial: One of two bronze age graves packed with flint nodules – now heaped above (scales 50cm/1m).

However, these are just three of some 22 graves and pits that contained the remains of over 38 individuals. Together they throw much light on the murky world of copper age (Beaker and late Grooved Ware) and early bronze age burial practices, around 2400–1600BC. And though most graves apparently had no covering round barrow – if no doubt marked in some way – they were not alone on the down, as a number of structures and enclosures have also been identified.

Amongst these were a large pit circle 60m in diameter – similar to the Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge – an enigmatic four-post setting or building with a central pit, and a pit and post alignment reminiscent of façade-like structures sometimes found with late neolithic ritual buildings or temples. All have been radiocarbon dated to the mid 3rd millennium BC. Pits in the alignment contained a possible dog burial, cattle bone and cremated human bone. Near these sites were groups of pits with Grooved Ware: most contained used and broken pottery, flintwork, food remains and hearth material, although cereal was notably absent. One was exceptional in that it held over 100 flint scrapers and evidence for scraper manufacture. It also contained Cornish stone axe fragments and badger teeth!

Brief rest

Only half of the burials (a mix of inhumation and cremation) were accompanied by a Beaker, or more rarely, a bronze age Food Vessel or Collared Urn. This may not be as unusual as it sounds. Although of course we know very little of organic items that may have been left with the body – in textile, leather or wood for example – most such burials typically reveal only one or a modest number of grave objects.

A recurring theme at Boscombe is the physical revisiting of graves. This may have happened with the archer's, and was certainly the case with the bowmen's, with its sequence of burials and rearranged bones and pots. The latter was eventually covered by a barrow, that became a focus for other burials, mostly of children: one was that of a boy buried with an amber necklace, who has his own extraordinary story that we will hear soon. This barrow in turn was not alone, and appears to have been part of a linear cemetery now mostly hidden under housing. Further barrows were recorded here in the 1950s and 1990s, along with the more recent discovery of Grooved Ware pits and another Beaker burial.

Other graves provide varied evidence for early bronze age disturbance and revisiting. We fully investigated only one barrow. The central grave had been dug into, disturbing the lower half of a body while it was still fleshed; some missing bone may have been removed. Jacqueline McKinley's provisional analysis indicates that the remains of a neonate and at least two young adults were also present in the grave fill. We recovered sherds from several Beakers, a flint arrowhead, scrapers and antler, some of which may have lain with one or more of the bodies, although it is now impossible to determine which.

A Food Vessel and deposit of human bone had been added to the upper fill of another grave, while a third Beaker grave had been cut into and packed with flint nodules, among the upper part of which were fragments of two Food Vessels. In this case little disturbance to the underlying burial had occurred: it was almost as if they had been trying to locate the grave and the body.

Flint nodules would have to have been collected from the adjacent area, available at a time when people were beginning to farm the land: we found two roundhouses associated with Collared Urn pottery and cereal grain. The flint packing of graves may have been an attempt to prevent any earlier "spirits" from wandering. It appears to be a post-Beaker phenomenon, as at least two such inhumations were backfilled in this way. One cut a small ring ditch, and the other was outside the barrow ditch that enclosed the bowmen grave – the boy with the amber necklace.

A third bronze age inhumation had a Food Vessel and small deposit of cremated bone placed above it. This time the original burial had not been disturbed. At yet another inhumation, the top of the grave was cut into and backfilled with animal bone and broken pottery, including pieces from a number of coarse Beakers as well as finer combimpressed wares. The bone included the feet from a falcon-like bird.

If graves were sometimes being disturbed and reopened, then what happened to the bone that was being removed? One possible answer could come from the discovery of pits with disarticulated or semi-articulated human bone. This includes two groups near the late neolithic four-post structure. The most enigmatic group was a row of three pits, where the central one contained human bone including skull and long bones, and the other two each held a complete combimpressed Beaker. A further pit also appears to have held human bone and the side of a Beaker vessel. Postexcavation work continues, and it is likely that more insights into Beaker mortuary practice will be revealed.

A real Mycenaean?

Amber beads (c2mm diameter) recovered from an Early Bronze Age burial at Boscombe Down.

So what of the boy with the beads? The burial is one of 10 we excavated near the bowmen, all that survives of the small early bronze age barrow cemetery. It was located just outside a barrow ditch, and contained over 90 amber beads in a shallow chalk-cut grave. The style of burial is late within the Wessex 2 grave series (1700–1500BC), confirmed by a single radiocarbon date of 1530–1430BC – over 700 years after the first Beaker burials. The beads, probably a necklace, set this burial apart from others so far recorded at Boscombe Down, although jewellery or personal adornment is well documented from Wessex-type graves from around Stonehenge and beyond.

Jane Evans and Carolyn Chenery of the NERC Isotopes Geosciences Laboratory (British Geological Service) had earlier proposed surprising life histories for the archer and some of the bowmen, having examined oxygen and strontium isotopes fixed within their tooth enamel: the isotopes reflect a combination of local climate and geology at the time of tooth growth. As part of the Boscombe Down Project, working with Alistair Barclay, Jackie McKinley and Andrew Fitzpatrick (Wessex Archaeology), Evans and Chenery analysed the boy's teeth.

To date the project is showing that most people buried at Boscombe at this time were either local to the area or the adjacent chalkland. But here is a fifth "isotopic stranger", a probable teenage boy (14–15 years) from abroad. His strontium isotope values are consistent with the local chalk, although similar values are possible from other limestone areas beyond Britain. But the oxygen reflects a childhood in an area warmer than Wessex. Although such oxygen values can be found on the extreme south-west coast of the UK, the overall pattern is consistent with areas of southern Europe.

So we may have direct evidence for a person travelling to the Stonehenge area during the C16th or 15th BC from the Mediterranean. At this time northern European amber was exchanged widely. It is probable that the person buried and the necklace – perhaps acquired as a gift late in life or even after death – had different origins and histories.

Our current understanding based on the study of exotic artefacts, mostly from rich barrow graves, is that only a small number of objects made such journeys. However, the tooth analysis shows that people moved too, and over considerable distances – and in this case to near the temple complex that is Stonehenge, which by 1500BC was already over 1,000 years old. The links between Stonehenge and the Mediterranean have been debated for at least 130 years, although most – if not all – have since been dismissed. The most enigmatic and famous claimed connection is the supposed representation of a Mycenaean dagger, carved into one of the standing stones. Perhaps now even that needs revisiting. The amber burial from Boscombe adds one small but potentially significant detail to this continuing debate.

Alistair Barclay is a senior project manager for Wessex Archaeology.

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